ABSTRACT
This chapter is a future-oriented framing exercise that sets out to establish a set of perspectives from which the limits of statebuilding can be understood in terms of the interrelationship between statebuilding and peace formation. It thereby outlines the often countervailing forces and norms of state formation, statebuilding, and peacebuilding according to their associated theoretical approaches, concepts, and methodologies. It introduces a new concept of ‘peace formation’ which counterbalances the previous concepts’ reliance on internal violence or external institutions’ agency in terms of pushing reform and the use of operational conditionality. Without incorporating a better understanding of the multiple and often critical agencies involved in peace formation, the states that emerge from statebuilding will remain as they are – failed by design, because they are founded on external systems, legitimacy, and norms rather than upon a contextual, critical, and emancipatory epistemology of peace. Engaging with the processes of peace formation may aid international actors in gaining a better understanding of the roots of a conflict, how local actors may be assisted, how violence and power-seeking may be ended or managed, and how local legitimacy may emerge. It may also provide an understanding of how newly forming peaces may influence international order and the liberal peace.
